Why do people keep asking about OSX on Intel. I guess people are just "stuck on stupid"

Apple hardware doesn't cost significantly more money to make. They just charge more for it. These intel dreams are spawned by people thinking they will buy that cheap Emachines and still get a Macintosh experience. Apple has IBM fabbing chips for them yet people want crappy cores like Intel's Prescott or the cool but horribly expensive Opterons.

How well is Itanium doing against the POWER series. Their gettin' their arses kicked people. In the high end CPU sandbox Intel is the one getting sand kicked in their face. IBM has had fab issues just like Intel. The bleeding edge hurts but there is no way I want to see IBM traded out for dinky little AMD or the Paper Launch Kings(Intel)

Show me a PC with custom design like the iMac G5 for 1299. Hell anyone can slap together commodity components for cheap..I easily built two PCs myself..I'd probably never buy a PC from a vendor. But custom design I cannot do. The innards of the G5 are breathtaking...I just hope it can stay cool.

He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.- SolipsismX

I think that the best reason for Apple to go to Intel chips (or any x86 architecture, for that matter) is the software possibilities.

Let's face it....Virtual PC stinks and now that Microsoft owns it, it will likely become non-existant.

However, if Apple moved to x86 architecture, then the emulation becomes much better. For example, Linux users can run a program called Win-for-Lin (or something like that) that runs windows program at nearly identical speeds as running the program under windows.

Originally posted by Dr.BimaneI think that the best reason for Apple to go to Intel chips (or any x86 architecture, for that matter) is the software possibilities.

Let's face it....Virtual PC stinks and now that Microsoft owns it, it will likely become non-existant.

However, if Apple moved to x86 architecture, then the emulation becomes much better. For example, Linux users can run a program called Win-for-Lin (or something like that) that runs windows program at nearly identical speeds as running the program under windows.

That would eliminate the "no apps for Apple" problem.

-Dr. Bimane

This has been talked to death. MacOS X on Intel will not run Classic. It will not run the tens of thousands past and current MacOS and MacOS X applications, except in emulation. It will also put a substantial number of Mac-only developers out of business. Those of us with software investments running into the thousands of dollars will be forced to keep our old hardware longer than we had intended. Quite frankly, I cannot describe a scenario in which Mac-on-Intel helps anyone but Intel.

Previous poster is correct. Programmers cannot just recompile and make their programs X86 compatible unless we're talking about really small apps and some other massaging. Carbon Photoshop? Forget it.

A much cooler idea is this and it was actually attempted at one time...er ok it was a rumor of an attempt.

IBM was working on a PowerPC 615 chip that would natively run both Mac and PC software right down to the CPU. No emulation at all. As you can tell if never flew but don't be too suprised to see another attempt within the next Decade.

If I've read correctly the multicore POWER5 processors can actually run different OS on some cores provided that OS supports PPC. The next logical step would be to try and graph two cores onto a die that are two completely different ISAs. Thus IBM or Apple could ship computers that can simultaneous run Longhorn 2009 and OSX 10.6. A command key could switch right from the OSX portion to X86 portion. As much effort as needed would be made to share components like Cache and memory controllers.

No would that rock your knot or what! I'm thinking by the time we hit 45nm IBM may investigate this again. I imagine they'd love to sell Servers that can run Linux X86, Linux PPC and flavors of Unix simultaneously.

The kicker is that PCs wouldn't be able to reciprocate because the PPC ISA hasn't been reverse engineered. So no...don't give me OSX on Intel...give me PPC/X86 in the same box.

He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.- SolipsismX

Originally posted by Dr.BimaneI think that the best reason for Apple to go to Intel chips (or any x86 architecture, for that matter) is the software possibilities.
...
That would eliminate the "no apps for Apple" problem.

Originally posted by hmurchisonWhy do people keep asking about OSX on Intel. I guess people are just "stuck on stupid"

Quote:

Originally posted by dobbyBrilliant summation!

Yes it is brilliant. Better then reading peoples reasons to have "Mac OS X on Intel". From the forums, to online petitions, give it up. Apple can be the most innovative software company on earth, they go up against MS they die. If Apple ever ports OS X to Intel it will signal their end. When or if their marketshare gets too low to sustain themselves it will happen. Enjoy.

Quote:

Originally posted by hmurchisongive me PPC/X86 in the same box.

Exactly. At this point they should be able to pack a fanless VIA Eden in there, what about PCI-X PC cards similar to what Sun offers in their Sparc workstations?

Originally posted by hmurchison...Apple could ship computers that can simultaneous run Longhorn 2009 and OSX 10.6. A command key could switch right from the OSX portion to X86 portion. As much effort as needed would be made to share components like Cache and memory controllers.

No would that rock your knot or what! I'm thinking by the time we hit 45nm IBM may investigate this again. I imagine they'd love to sell Servers that can run Linux X86, Linux PPC and flavors of Unix simultaneously.

The kicker is that PCs wouldn't be able to reciprocate because the PPC ISA hasn't been reverse engineered. So no...don't give me OSX on Intel...give me PPC/X86 in the same box.

Now that is a great idea

Adobe, Macromedia, ID, Blizzard, <insert any multiplatform company here> would no longer need to update or maintain a seperate Mac version. They could just say "buy the Windows version, it works absolutly fine, at 100% speed, on your machine". It would save all of these companies tons (read tons) of money to cut out having to do the development, support, etc work for a seperate Mac version. All efforts could be put into the Windows version that now would run nativly on Apple hardware.

Eventually, there would be no "Mac specific" software. If you were starting a new application, why would a developer write a program that could only target Mac users, when they could write a single program for Windows that covered everyone? In time, with no software running under MacOS X, Apple would fold as a company. Why would you buy MacOS X if there were no apps? Why would you buy the expensive Apple hardware, if the "PPC" chip went unused?

Originally posted by hmurchison...
The kicker is that PCs wouldn't be able to reciprocate because the PPC ISA hasn't been reverse engineered. So no...don't give me OSX on Intel...give me PPC/X86 in the same box.

Though, once - years ago - that happend. Remember these beige days (±1994) when apple introduced the PPC 6100 (pizza box). They delivered the pizza box with a build in 468 card, in order to tempt all pc boys. Compatibility was the main concern, though. No impact, big failure IM(h)O

Why is Apple so wrong for wanting to create a single-source working computer? Apple wants to appeal to a demographic that wants stuff to work, as opposed to those who enjoy cobbling together a solution. They appeal to bigger picture thinkers who see Total Cost of Ownership beyond what the receipts for the purchases add up to.

Who out there is really demanding the option to run OS X on anything else? People who would enjoy mucking around with strange hardware to get it to work? Mac enthusiasts? Linux types?

About the only OS X on Intel we might see is a thin client that will allow your Intel box to hook into an XServe. And the only time Apple might introduce something like that is when they have Xgrid integrated into the OS so that there is a definite advantage to having Mac hardware running all over the place. Then you can give a secretary a fast Mac as the CPU cycles will be used by graphic artists for their PhotoShop filters.

What's the point of these "Mac on Intel" posts? The people smoking crack around here seem to belive that they could use a $299 eMachines system to run OSX once it's ported to the Intel chips. On the other hand there are the pipe dreamers that have the illusion of running both OSX and Windows natively on the same box. What gives??

OSX will stay on Apple hardware. (personal opinion)
I can take my B&W G3 OS X drive and put it in a dual 1.25 MDD and my system is upgraded!
I can also do this with a 1.6G5 to a Dual2G5.
You can't do this on a MS or Linux box without updating drivers.
This isn't Apple specific as it generally applies for most proprietry OS/Hardware vendors eg HP UX, SUN, SGI, VMS...

According to an unconfirmed report, there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support this technology for the x86 platform. Beyond allowing Tiger to run on x86, perhaps more significantly is the potential to also allow existing Mac OS X applications to be run on the x86 (PC) platform without recompilation. Otherwise, requiring developers to recompile all current Mac OS X applications has been seen as a major hurdle in providing Mac OS X on the PC.

Originally posted by rrabuJobs already tried the "switch my great OS over to Intel" with Next. I doubt he'd repeat this.

NeXT had no big following, NeXT had no pop culture hook, like apples iPod, NeXT hit x86 when windows was in its hay day, windows is getting a bad rep now, spyware, adware, viruses, yada, yada, and could you inagine the server market?Apple could say "Hey small biz comunity, you can have all of the advantages of unix without keeping an expert on staff - it is unix servers for the rest of us!" and for desktops, well you all know those advantages, but I dont see this going beta till WWDC 2006 and a release in Paris 2006, because If apple does this, MS will pull office so fast that it will make your head spin, so before this can be done, Apple needs to mature iWork and make a real pro level version complete with filemaker.

You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.

AMD and Intel are planning to have virtualization built into their next line of CPUs. This could give Apple the window it needs to run on x86 but still keep the legacy baggage of current apps.

Wintel (MS and Intel) isn't as powerful as it used to be, thanks to AMD offering some promising ideas (like a 32bit/64bit cpu) and linux/unix gaining steam in the server world. If that weren't the case, then x86-64 wouldn't exist at all. Intel didn't want to have 64bit on x86. They wanted IA64 to be the exclusive 64bit CPU for the masses. Despite the huge amount of money that was dumped into Itanium, it still hasn't taken very well. Sales are up lately, but IBM just launched a great Xeon SMP system. Xeon, of course, now has x86-64 as well. This leads us back to virtualization. I think Intel's hope is still force IA64 this way. AMD's reasoning might be otherwise. Either way, it will be interesting to see how virtualization will turn out for other OS's.

Huh? Are you guys suggesting that clock speed is the only thing that matters? If this were true, then the K8 would be getting smoked by the 3.8ghz P4. I can assure you that it doesn't. There are considerable architectural differences among the P4, K8, and G5, so to assume that they all perform the same at 2.5ghz is just plain silly. I think that if Apple adopted the K8, you would certainly see some performance gains, even without a big clockspeed improvement.

Originally posted by KickahaSo if we ask him if he's a Martian sent to subjugate the Terran population, and he says no, then he must be?

By definition.

There is nothing to say that Apple could not port OSX to Intel and use special boards that would be able to run OSX and Windows. However this seems to be a reciepe for disaster, in that why would anyone port their apps to MacOSX? If the Macintosh computers can run Windows then why write for Mac. The best answer is, all of the programmers working on apps for Linux and Unix. Make them a great platform, with a great OS with lots of services, (Core Audio, Image, Data, etc.) Provide them with great tools that they cannot find other places, and charge them little to nothing compared to the competition and show them an expanding market. I think that when you see Tiger, Quicktime7, Xcode, and the continued progression of the halo effect, that is the best that Apple can do. And the number of applications on MacOSX is going up. This takes time. I also failed to mention the next best thing to the Halo effect and that is hackers and Windows security issues, even more switchers.